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Monday, October 31, 2016

How do you tell a cynical millennial that there is still hope and promise in America? How do you persuade a young person who sees a tattered American dream that there are ways to reinvigorate this country? How do we convince a young American to realize that "if freedom is lost here there is no [other] place to escape to?"

How do you explain to a generation of students who have never learned about socialism and communism that these ideas are inimical to what the Founding Fathers wanted? How do you remind them of the radical idea that "government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people?" And that if we give up this birthright of ours, we have surrendered to the totalitarianism that describes far too much of the world.

How do you assert that America's best years are not behind us but that the best is yet to be -- if, and only if, we begin a return to America's ideals of freedom and opportunity and not let an overweening government sap away our energies and our dreams?

How do you prove to a generation who receives its news in sound bites and from uninformed entertainers that a separation of powers is critical to maintaining a balance of power? How do you emphasize to them that when a government agency breaks the law and we do not rise up to demand a rectification, we, the American people, have foolishly chosen a "downward path?"

Time is truly short, but, it behooves us to be reminded of the words of Ronald Reagan when on October 27, 1964 he wrote "A Time for Choosing"

You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, 'The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.'

The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose.

Consider that Hillary has hinted that she likes the confiscation of guns as she cites the Australian example and ignores the Second Amendment.

Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, 'What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.' But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.

In fact, "Hillary Clinton wants to expand Social Security, a program that's already bankrupt, and fund it by taxing high incomes and capital gains. Social Security's unfunded liabilities for the future now total over $25 trillion. No, that's not a typo -- it's trillion." This simply cannot be sustained and is an existential threat to the country.

We need true tax reform that will at least make a start toward restoring for our children the American Dream that wealth is denied to no one, that each individual has the right to fly as high as his strength and ability will take him. But we can not have such reform while our tax policy is engineered by people who view the tax as a means of achieving changes in our social structure.

Hillary Clinton will usher in a third term of Barack Hussein Obama. Her mounting scandals demonstrate that she has broken American law on numerous occasions. How can this woman be given the sacred mantle of the presidency when she clearly thinks she is a law unto herself? On every major issue between Hillary and Trump, it is a clear-cut choice -- either elect someone who wants to expand government and rob Americans of our rights or begin the arduous task of whittling down government control. Yet,

". . . any time you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we're denounced as being opposed to their humanitarian goals. It seems impossible to legitimately debate their solutions with the assumption that all of us share the desire to help the less fortunate. They tell us we're always 'against,' never 'for' anything.

We who see the horrors of Venezuela and Argentina in their slide toward socialism are alarmed that America is headed in this direction.

We are for aiding our allies by sharing our material blessings with nations which share our fundamental beliefs, but we are against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the world.

Donald Trump's plans to restore security, the rule of law, and the protection of the American worker are course corrections for our current situation. We now owe over $21 trillion dollars, and 95 million Americans are unemployed. Despair and fear of debt are echoed by far too many of the young people in my classrooms.

There can be no security anywhere in the free world if there is no fiscal and economic stability within the United States. Those who ask us to trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state are architects of a policy of accommodation.

Trump wants to "lift restrictions on the production of $50 trillion dollars worth of job producing American energy reserves including shale oil, natural gas and clean coal."

Hillary Clinton will add more onerous bureaucracies and will further burden Americans. The current Democratic party is "now in all but name a socialist party. If Clinton wins, the government will . . . tell companies how much they must pay employees. And if you think that this is unconstitutional . . . it won't matter, because she will appoint left-wing Supreme Court justices and left-wing federal judges who do not view their roles as protectors of the Constitution."

Reagan correctly reminded us to "recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon [our] own business."

Obama's many unconstitutional actions must be overturned. Hillary will not do this; but Trump has pledged that he will "cancel all unconstitutional executive orders issued by President Obama."

The Congress needs to be reined in and do its job or it does not deserve the privilege of making fiscal decisions. And this goes for any Republican or Democrat who has not listened to the people's will. Trump has stated that he will ask for "a 5 year ban on former White House and congressional officials becoming lobbyists." He also wants to "propose a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress."

Because no government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size, government programs once launched never go out of existence.

ObamaCare must finally end. It continues to repeatedly fail, as it was always intended to, and "millions of people will soon find only one insurance company participating in their area. Premiums will climb at rates that were unimaginablebefore Obamacare allegedly fixed the individual insurance market. Ultimately, the single payer system that Obama and Hillary yearn for will be the final nail in the coffin.

Realize that the doctor's fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can't socialize the doctors without socializing the patients.

In fact, as Victor Davis Hanson explains "what destroys civilizations are not, as popularly advertised, plagues, global warming, or hostile tribes on the horizon, as much as self-indulgence, self-delusion -- and, finally, abject paralysis." Since "no nation can remain stable when 10-20 million foreign nationals have crashed through . . . an open border and reside unlawfully" it is incumbent to "suspend immigration from terror prone regions" as Trump has proposed.

If some among you fear taking a stand because you are afraid of reprisals from customers, clients, or even government, recognize that you are just feeding the crocodile hoping he'll eat you last.

The Trump/Pence plans are a beginning. As Reagan reminded us, "we have come to a time for choosing." Will we continue to be the "last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence [our children] into a thousand years of darkness?

With the proliferation of electronic voting machines across the country, many are nervous about the integrity of our election. Our government has assured us that there's no problem (oh, now I feel better). They promise there''s no voter fraud – just more crazy, conspiracy talk. Of course, they've been proven wrong again and again with the voting dead, absentee ballots, and yes, machines switchingvotes.

Voting irregularities don't always point to fraud, but rigged voting machines are in-our-face vote theft. Unless we've reached the age of the Terminator, where machines have a life of their own, machines have to be programmed by people to steal votes. And no, it's not Russia – it's companies like Dominion Voting, who donate big to the Clinton Foundation. Or Smartmatic, with ties to George Soros, who has consistently fought voter rights.

Donald Trump's enemies (government) will do anything to stop him, so I doubt they'd refrain from tampering with the voting machine's code. Nah! As sure as Hillary's taking a nap right now, they've got their evil, corrupt fingerprints all over these machines.

Okay, it would be naive to rule out vote-tampering, but what can we do to protect our ballot? Sounds like they have a lock, right? Well, if we continue on our present course, yes, they'll at least have a good shot at success. In reported vote-switching incidents to date, a person votes a straight Republican ticket, and before he posts that vote, magic circus, it flips to Clinton-Kaine at the top of the ticket. The voter then reports the problem to a poll worker, who assists to get the correct ballot accepted. Then the process moves on to the next voter.

As Trump likes to say, are we this stupid? If they get the machine to work at all, it doesn't mean the effort to cheat failed; it simply indicates that the switched votes are spaced out or random. How many Republican votes do they have to flip to win that county's election? Every fourth vote? Every eighth? Or are machines programmed to randomly flip a fixed number, thereby avoiding a pattern, indicating a calibration error rather than fraud? These are computers, for God's sake. This is child's play.

If our solution is to identify and fix a single instance of voter fraud, then we're letting them finish their work unimpeded. It's great that someone noticed the changed ballot, but will the next 100 voters be as observant?

The fact is, we never should have allowed these machines in the first place. Some believed the hype that they'd be ahead of the curve with the latest technology. Others bought their new vacation homes with our votes. But whatever the reasons, we need to address this now, this election.

In the true spirit of a totalitarian government, our leaders have once again put the onus on the people to protect our votes, but that's not satisfactory – not now, not in this election. We obviously can't fix it running from poll to poll to "report" switched votes – too sporadic, too unreliable, and too late once the fraudulent votes have been tallied. (The machines that tally votes is yet another path to fraudulent results.)

And no, please don't let the crooks in D.C. send in their corrupt FBI or Department of Justice (DOJ). That's whom we're trying to vote out. Talk about letting the fox guard the hen house.

No, a real effort needs to be put forth immediately. We need a plan that's quick to implement and offers at least partial solutions. There need to be instructions, reminders to every voter to check their ballot as a final step before submitting. This can be done with:

Signs (English and Spanish) in polling places with electronic machines instructing voters to confirm their selections. Miranda rights for voters when they sign in. They have a right to have their vote counted, so check and double-check before casting their votes. If they don't speak English, bag the ballot check and double-check their . If a machine is found to be flipping votes, it needs to be taken offline immediately and investigated or held for investigation. A single reported instance is not to be "remedied" and the machine left in service. That's like arresting one illegal immigrant then turning our backs on the border.

Lastly, the person who programmed the fraudulent machine needs to be found and prosecuted. No matter how long it takes, anyone who is interfering with our elections, "rigging" them, needs to pay a price.

These things can be done right now. Signs can be made and put up. A voter's rights can be available immediately in an email. Here, I'll help:

As far as tracking down the scum who's messing with these machines, it's possibly the most necessary action. If there are no consequences other than a big bonus check or pay raise, they won't stop.

I'm not arrogant enough to think this is a perfect plan. It's not. But these are things we can do right now to alert voters to the problems. Most have no idea that their vote can be switched by the machine, either they have very hectic lives and aren't paying attention or they get their news from mainstream media.

If we get through this election, then the last piece of my plan is to get rid of the damned electronic voting machines. I know: many of you on the County Board of Elections thought you were doing the smart thing. You weren't. Some of you knew it was a hotbed of potential fraud but had some private incentive to go through with it.

No matter what your reasons, there's no rationale for putting in machines that can be controlled or manipulated as the method to collect our ballots. That's beyond insane; it's reckless and criminal to setup the American voter for this level of betrayal.

The easiest way isn't always the best. We might have to forego the instant gratification of calling races as soon as the polls close in order to retain ballot integrity, but in the end, it's about our democracy, our Constitution, and our freedom. Might be worth the wait, don't you think?

We've let the voter fraud reach the point where it threatens our elections. There are lots of good people working hard to expose it and prosecute the perpetrators. They're doing a great job on containing many forms of fraud, but these machines are the imminent danger, the immediate threat to the 2016 presidential election. The machines have the ability to flip votes and, if unchecked, to flip the election.

There's a quote most often attributed to Joseph Stalin that says it all. "Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."

Muslim Immigration and Integration in the United States and Western Europe

Cato Institute - Monday October 31, 2016

by Alex Nowrasteh

Muslim immigrant assimilation in the United States is proceeding well. American Muslims have either similar or greater socio-economic status and levels of education than the average American. They are also active in civil and political society. However, this is not the case in Europe where Muslim immigrants tend to have worse labor market outcomes, are less well educated, and less socially integrated. The lack of assimilation and integration in Europe is affected by policies regarding multiculturalism, welfare, labor market regulation, citizenship, and guest worker laws that make integration more costly.

Integration in Europe

Social opinions show how Muslims in Europe are less integrated than in the United States. In Europe, there is a wide gap between Muslim and non-Muslim acceptance of homosexuality (Figure 1) and abortion (Figure 2) according to three surveys published in 2007and2009. The acceptance gap on these issues is the smallest in the United States – meaning that Muslims in the United States have opinions that are closer to the general public than in European countries (Figure 3).

Figure 1

Is Homosexuality Morally Acceptable?

Sources: Pew and Gallup.

Figure 2

Is Abortion Morally Acceptable?

Sources: Pew and Gallup.

Figure 3

Acceptance Gap

Sources: Pew and Gallup.

Opinions on social issues are just one aspect of this gap in assimilation but an important one for judging how assimilated immigrants are into Western culture. Although there are many other areas that could be compared, opinions of abortion and homosexuality show that Muslim Europeans are less well-assimilated than Muslims in the United States.

Labor Markets

InEurope, Muslims were less likely to have a job than non-Muslims in 2009, while they were more likely to have one in the United States (Figure 4).

Figure 4

Do You Have a Job?

Source: Gallup.

Immigrants in Europe are more likely to be unemployed than natives in every country except Hungary and Slovakia. Figure 5 shows the gap in native-born and Muslim unemployment. In the United States, immigrants have a lower unemployment rate than natives. However, in most European countries the unemployment rate for immigrants is far above that of natives – by almost 11 percentage points in Belgium.

Virtually all Muslims in Western Europe are immigrants or the descendants of recent immigrants from outside of the EU. The employment gap, measured by subtracting the non-EU immigrant employment rate from the EU-15employment rate, shows an even wider gap for the predominantly Muslim immigrants (Figure 6). There are other immigrants in Europe from outside of the EU that are included in this figure.

Figure 6

Employment Gap between Non-EU Immigrants and Native-EU Citizens, 2015

Source: OECD.

Figure 7 addresses that problem by showing that immigrants to the EU-OECD from the Middle East and North Africa, who are predominately Muslim, fare the worst in the labor market. European labor market controls and regulations explain the differences between American and European outcomes.

Labor market regulations make it expensive for firms to hire new workers, incentivizing employers to hire workers they know and are familiar with. Since immigrants are some of the most unfamiliar workers in any labor market, regulations in Europe result in lower employment rates for Muslim immigrants. There is empirical literature documenting their relatively poor labor market integration going back decades (Kogan, 2004; Fleischmann and Dronkers, 2010; Kogan, 2010). Less employment means less hope for the future, fewer opportunities for integration, and a general sense of unease in their new societies. European labor market regulations are crushing job opportunities for Muslim immigrants and their descendants.

Figure 7

EU-OECD Unemployment Rate by Region of Origin, 2015

Source: OECD.

A plethora of rules across countries, from minimum wages to collective bargaining to severe punishments for firing employees, all increase the cost of hiring workers (OECD EPL Database, 2013). In France, employees must be rehired if they were fired unfairly, which includes cases where the firing was done to “save money or boost profits.” In these inflexible labor markets, firms have an incentive to keep their workforces small and to entrust responsibilities to experienced employees rather than to hire unknown or unproven job seekers who are more likely to be immigrants.

Muslim immigrant workers are generally less skilled and productive than European workers, meaning they earn a lower wage, but minimum wages prevent such legal bidding down. Labor market regulations are categorized and ranked by the OECD on a 0 to 6 scale ranging from no labor market protections to total government control. Averaging the categories shows that the United States’ labor market is significantly less regulated than Europe (Figure 8). This explains part of the employment and unemployment gap between Muslim immigrant and native Europeans.

Figure 8

Labor Market Regulations

Source: OECD.

Baked into the OECD labor market regulations are rules to protect trade unions, which are more powerful in most European countries than in the United States (Bisin et al., 2011). Unions exist to raise the wages of their members by decreasing the supply of labor available to employers. Immigrants increase the supply of labor so unions favor rules that exclude them from employment, benefiting the economic “insiders” who already have union jobs at the expense of the “outsiders” who are more likely to be Muslim immigrants (Lindbeck and Snower, 2001).

The empirical literature supports the theory that inflexible labor markets disproportionately harm the employment prospects of immigrants. Bisin et al. (2011) find a statistically robust negative relationship between trade union density and the immigrant employment rate. They also find some evidence that employment protections and minimum wages reduce immigrant employment. Kogan (2006) finds that “liberal welfare regimes” with decentralized industrial-labor relations and high labor market flexibility lead to better employment outcomes for male immigrants. Gebel and Giesecke (2011)add that extensive employment protections for permanent workers increase both unemployment for low-skilled workers as well as the incidence of temporary contracts between employers and low-skilled workers.

The United States is the least regulated labor market among the developed countries analyzed (Figure 8). American labor markets are much less rigid than their European counterparts and thus significantly less likely to disadvantage immigrants in employment, Muslim or otherwise. This partially explains the higher employment of immigrants in the U.S. labor market (Figure 5) and the higher rate of Muslim employment in the U.S. relative to the general public (Figure 4).

Welfare

Many European countries have generous welfare states that provide extensive aid to the poor, including immigrants. This creates two significant obstacles to integration. The first is that welfare programs reduce the incentive to work. Work provides useful skills and experience, facilitates social relationships and cultural understanding, provides an incentive to learn the language and culture of the new country, and supplies hope for the future. Since many immigrant families have a large number of dependents, the incentive to collect means-tested aid rather than find employment is stronger than for natives who tend to have fewer dependents at home (Bratsberg et al., 2010). The inherent unpleasantness of work and the added difficulty of working in a new country that restricts employment because of onerous labor market regulations make welfare a particularly attractive alternative.

Figure 9 shows that EU countries spend more on social welfare as a percent of GDP than the United States. The total quantity of social welfare spending as a percent of GDP isn’t as important as how it’s spent. Benefits to working-age Europeans and immigrants will have a worse impact on the labor force than benefits to retired workers. Hansen and Lofstrom (2003) found that immigrants in Sweden were more likely to use welfare services than natives even when accounting for the negative effect of assimilation on welfare participation.

In addition to working in a country with a smaller welfare state, poor immigrants to the United States are less likely to use means-tested welfare benefits than natives and, when they do, the dollar value of their consumption is lower than for poor natives. Borjas (1999) finds different welfare policy between American states negatively-selects immigrants but Zavodny (1997) and Kashoul (2005) find otherwise. However, the perception that immigrants overconsume welfare certainly holds an important place in partisan debate and contributes to anti-immigration sentiment (Hussey and Pearson-Merkowitz, 2013) or an anti-welfare opinion.

Guest Workers and Quasi-Citizens

Some European countries established guest worker visas for lower-skilled workers after World War II to allow the temporary migration of workers to aid in post-war reconstruction and to fuel a rapidly recovering economy. The European governments intended the guest workers to migrate for work and to eventually resettle in their home countries, perhaps after several trips back and forth via circular-migration. This is in contrast to the United States where most Muslim immigrants originally entered as skilled workers who sent for their similarly educated and skilled relatives.

Germany’s guest worker program operated from 1955 to 1973 (Anil, 2006). Although the workers came from many nations inside of Europe, Turkey quickly became the largest origin country (Anil, 2006). Of the 14 million guest workers who entered Germany, only 11 million returned (Anil, 2006). As soon as the guest worker program was canceled, the migrants sent for their families to join them in Germany. The Netherlands had a similar experience whereby workers, mainly Turkish and Moroccan (Buijs, 2009), and their families entered the country (Doomernik, 2012). France had a similar experience with mostly North and West African migrants. In 1974, the guest workers who had remained were legally permitted to bring over their families and gain citizenship (Salem, 2013). In Britain, this happened even sooner, with an immigration ban being instituted in 1962. Although it prevented more workers into the country, it created a system for the workers who were present to bring in their families (Leiken, 2015). To beat the ban, this “secondary migration” occurred hastily and on a great scale (Leiken, 2015).

The Dutch response to the labor migration that turned permanent was a series of multicultural programs that encouraged immigrants to retain their own culture rather than to assimilate. The German response was to treat the immigrant communities as just guest workers until the 1990s, separating them from German society (Salem, 2013). Indeed, until the German government passed citizenship reforms that granted birthright citizenship to children of immigrants who had lived on German soil for eight years and eased naturalization, these immigrants were largely in citizenship limbo (Anil, 2006).

Citizenship remains a key component of integration. Without it, immigrants are limited in how they can interact with civil society. Citizenship gives one a greater sense of belonging (de Rooij, 2012) and can fuel both political and professional participation with others. Muslims have had a different experience in the United States because they have been able to naturalize ever since they’ve started arriving in increasing numbers since the 1960s (Salem, 2013).

When the guest worker programs were canceled in Europe, many of the workers made the rational choice to stay and work illegally rather than return to poverty in their home countries. When guest worker programs operate, workers go back and forth secure in the knowledge that they can return for economic opportunity. When the programs end then those same workers refuse to leave because they will then never be able to return legally, thus turning a temporary worker flow into a permanently settled population. Interestingly, extending citizenship to these former guest workers or not terminating the program in the first places creates a circular flow with relatively few permanently settled residents. Increasing labor market regulations and a growing welfare state eventually pushed them out of the labor market but not out of the country. Multicultural policies separated the migrants from their neighbors while citizenship laws kept them and their descendants in a legal underclass. The United States avoided virtually all of these mistakes through not having a federal integration policy that emphasized cultural fads and by mandating birthright citizenship. Though Europe in recent years has moved away from multiculturalism towards assimilation, multicultural policy of the 1970s and 80s has left a lasting effect on integration to the present.

Cultural Barriers to Assimilation in Europe

Different histories and cultural attitudes toward immigration in Europe and the United States also help explain the different outcomes (Leiken, 2015). Immigration is engrained into the founding and continuous formation of the United States, but in a Europe defined by near-homogeneous ethnically-demarcated nation-states, immigration is recent and more troubling (Leiken, 2015). European multicultural policies made assimilation and integration more costly and helped to legitimize parallel communities. The Netherlands responded to waves of migration through “inclusionary” policies such as the Ethnic Minorities Policy of 1983 that spent government funds on religious institutions, educational programs, and immigrant media, for which immigrant communities could coexist with the native Dutch in autonomy. The result was separation (Vasta, 2007).

In Britain, multiculturalism emerged to counter discrimination, and encouraged new British subjects to live differently if they chose to (Malik, 2015), including a preservation of their cultural identity at the cost of social inclusion (Leiken, 2015). Germany’s self-conflicting identity of traditional German ethnocentrism and liberal multiculturalism both welcomes immigrants to stay without an incentive to integrate with ethnic Germans. Over time an ethnic identifier for being German might fade away and be replaced with a sense of “Germanness” like in the United States whereby being an American is not an issue of ethnicity but more of certain values, allegiances, and history. German policies halted that process. As a result, the large Turkish population’s social sphere remains within the Turkish community (Leiken, 2015), where Turks have become more religious and isolated (Malik, 2015), and employment opportunities continue to deteriorate.

Western Europe finds itself in a struggle between the ideals of modern universal tolerance and national ethnic-based identities that predate the current waves of immigration. European governments have made many mistakes in dealing with this issue. Inclusive programs to help these new ethnic and religious minorities created coexisting societies that run parallel to mainstream society, rather than in cohesion with their adopted homeland. The negative impact on citizenship as an institution has spilled over into other facets of life for Muslim immigrants, including employment, economic mobility, education, social acceptance, and political life.

Political Participation

In the United States, Muslims are about as politically active as their fellow countryman but not so in Western Europe. Muslim Americans are more likely to have a college degree than Americans generally while Muslim immigrants to Europe are much less well educated than native Europeans so the education difference could explain the difference (Angenendt et al., 2007). People who earn higher educations tend to be more politically active (Ayers & Hofstetter, 2008). They more readily embrace their American identity and have confidence in American institutions (Angenendt et al., 2007). Less educated European Muslims are more isolated, less economically successful, and they are less interested in participating in politics and civil society. They have less faith in European institutions and fewer resources to devote to community building.

Religion

Americans are more tolerant of religious differences and are more likely to recognize the positive role of religion than Europeans (Foner and Alba, 2008). Religious immigrants in the United States frequently use religion as a bridge to social inclusion and taking up American identity. For instance, religious membership serves the instrumental purpose of providing “refuge, respectability, and resources” to first- and second-generation immigrants looking for identity and sense of belonging, leadership, upward mobility, and an entryway into political life (Foner and Alba, 2008).

Europeans are less religious and there are fewer legal protections for religion. Broadly, European secularists either seek a rejection of religion from all public life or seek to promote a diversity of religious views (Mandaville, 2009). The “thick” secular view, as exemplified by the French government, seeks to marginalize religious expression as much as possible and prevent it from entering the public sphere through actions like the burqa ban (Mandaville, 2009).

The United Kingdom is more tolerant of religious differences than France. Interestingly, some Muslims support the official establishment of the Anglican Church on the grounds that it recognizes a positive role for religion in public life (Koenig, 2005). Cooperation between the government and religious organizations is not unique to the UK. In Germany, religious groups have a strong incentive to incorporate and thereby form nationally recognized and hierarchical religious organizations that receive subsidies but Muslims have not taken advantage of that system (Warner and Wenner, 2006).

Due to European religious institutions and government favoritism toward established churches, Muslims in Europe are at a de facto and de jure disadvantage compared to their American co-religionists who inhabit a much more religiously diverse, open, and free religious marketplace. The American view of religion as a force for social cohesion contrasts sharply with religion practiced the more secular, state-dominated, and alien established churches of Europe.

Conclusion

The results of Muslim immigration to the United States and Western Europe vary significantly. Muslims and their descendants are assimilating well in the United States while that is not the case in Europe. Since the end of guest worker programs in the 1970s, Muslim immigrants have struggled to fully integrate into much of European society. The relatively stricter labor markets and large welfare states have decreased the economic well-being of immigrant groups. European governments have strived for tolerance through pretty-sounding policies that have stifled integration, too often separating immigrant populations from the larger society. Those policies along with damaging welfare and labor market regulations should be reversed.

Special thanks to Cole Blondin and Martin Stillman for their excellent research and writing assistance on this piece.

Will Barack Obama Suspend The Election If Hillary Is Forced Out By The New FBI Email Investigation?

Just when it looked like Hillary Clinton was poised to win the 2016 election, the FBI has thrown a gamechanger into the mix. On Friday, FBI Director James Comey announced that his agency has discovered new emails related to Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information that they had not previously seen. According to the Associated Press, the newly discovered emails “did not come from her private server”, but instead were found when the FBI started going through electronic devices that belonged to top Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her husband Anthony Weiner. The FBI has been looking into messages of a sexual nature that Weiner had exchanged with a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina, and that is why they originally seized those electronic devices. According to the Washington Post, the “emails were found on a computer used jointly by both Weiner and his wife, top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, according to a person with knowledge of the inquiry”, and according to some reports there may be “potentially thousands” of emails on the computer that the FBI did not have access to previously. Even though there are less than two weeks to go until election day, this scandal has the potential to possibly force Clinton out of the race, and if that happens could Barack Obama delay or suspend the election until a replacement candidate can be found?

Let’s take this one step at a time. On Friday, financial markets tanked when reports of these new Clinton emails hit the wires. The following comes from CNN…

After recommending earlier this year that the Department of Justice not press charges against the former secretary of state, Comey said in a letter to eight congressional committee chairmen that investigators are examining newly discovered emails that “appear to be pertinent” to the email probe.

“In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear pertinent to the investigation,” Comey wrote the chairmen. “I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.”

At this point, we do not know what is contained in these emails. But without a doubt Huma Abedin is Hillary Clinton’s closest confidant, and I have always felt that she was Clinton’s Achilles heel. Journalist Carl Bernstein (of Watergate fame) is fully convinced that the FBI would have never made this move unless something significant had already been discovered…

We don’t know what this means yet except that it’s a real bombshell. And it is unthinkable that the Director of the FBI would take this action lightly, that he would put this letter forth to the Congress of the United States saying there is more information out there about classified e-mails and call it to the attention of congress unless it was something requiring serious investigation. So that’s where we are…

Is it a certainty that we won’t learn before the election? I’m not sure it’s a certainty we won’t learn before the election.

One thing is, it’s possible that Hillary Clinton might want to on her own initiative talk to the FBI and find out what she can, and if she chooses to let the American people know what she thinks or knows is going on. People need to hear from her…

If the FBI has indeed found something explosive, would they actually charge her with a crime right before the election?

It is possible, but we also have to remember that government agencies (including the FBI) tend to move very, very slowly. If there are thousands of emails, it is going to take quite a while to sift through them all. And of course Barack Obama has lots of ways that he could influence, delay or even shut down the investigation.

But if Hillary Clinton were to be forced out of the race by this FBI investigation,the Democrats would have to decide on a new candidate, and that would take time. The following is from a U.S. News & World Report article that examined what would happen if one of the candidates was forced out of the race for some reason…

If Clinton were to fall off the ticket, Democratic National Committee members would gather to vote on a replacement. DNC members acted as superdelegates during this year’s primary and overwhelmingly backed Clinton over boat-rocking socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

DNC spokesman Mark Paustenbach says there currently are 445 committee members – a number that changes over time and is guided by the group’s bylaws, which give membership to specific officeholders and party leaders and hold 200 spots for selection by states, along with an optional 75 slots DNC members can choose to fill.

But the party rules for replacing a presidential nominee merely specify that a majority of members must be present at a special meeting called by the committee chairman. The meeting would follow procedures set by the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee and proxy voting would not be allowed.

It would be extremely challenging to get a majority of the members of the Democratic National Committee together on such short notice. If Clinton were to drop out next week, it would be almost impossible for this to happen before election day.

In such a scenario, Barack Obama may attempt to invoke his emergency powers. Since the election would not be “fair” until the Democrats have a new candidate, he could try to delay or suspend the election. There would be a lot of controversy as to whether this is legal or not, but Barack Obama has not let the U.S. Constitution stop him in the past.

Meanwhile, new poll numbers show that the Trump campaign was already gaining momentum even before this story about the new emails broke. According to a brand new ABC News/Washington Post survey, Donald Trump is now only trailing Hillary Clinton by 4 points after trailing her by as much as 12 points last weekend.

And CNBC is reporting on a highly advanced artificial intelligence system that accurately predicted the outcomes of the presidential primaries and which is now indicating that Trump will be the winner in November…

An artificial intelligence system that correctly predicted the last three U.S. presidential elections puts Republican nominee Donald Trump ahead of Democrat rival Hillary Clinton in the race for the White House.

MogIA was developed by Sanjiv Rai, founder of Indian start-up Genic.ai. It takes in 20 million data points from public platforms including Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in the U.S. and then analyzes the information to create predictions.

The AI system was created in 2004, so it has been getting smarter all the time. It had already correctly predicted the results of the Democratic and Republican Primaries.

Without Hillary at the top of the ticket, the odds of a Trump victory would go way, way up.

So if Hillary is forced out of the race by this investigation, Barack Obama and the Democrats will want to delay or suspend the election for as long as possible if they can.

At this point there is probably not a high probability that such a scenario will play out, but in this crazy election year we have already seen that just about anything can happen.

On Friday, House Republicans announced Comey had changed his mind and the FBI would re-open its investigation into Hillary’s e-mails after discovering messages between Hillary and her longtime aide Huma Abedin on her husband Anthony Weiner’s computer. The news sent shockwaves through Democrats, who recently lauded the FBI director as an American hero.

Here are 12 times Democratic politicos couldn’t get enough of James Comey.

1. President Obama

During a press conference at his final NATO summit in July, Obama praised the FBI director for being “exhaustive” during his investigation into Clinton’s e-mails.

“I think Director Comey could not have been more exhaustive,” he said.

That wasn’t the first time POTUS had nice things to say about Comey. In June, the president called him a rarity, and said Comey didn’t care about politics, but was just interested in getting the job done.

The president has come under scrutiny after e-mails have come out revealing he communicated under an alias with Hillary via her private server, which indicates he knew about it for much longer than he’s admitted publicly. His involvement in the e-mail scandal is why some think the FBI and Department of Justice decided to shut down the initial investigation.

After the news broke over the weekend that his agency was re-opening the case, the same editorial board is now sayingComey “went too far” by giving Congress a head’s up about the investigation, and that he’s ruined democracy for everyone by casting a shadow over Hillary Clinton.

3. Donna Brazile

The DNC chairwoman tweeted out WaPo’s editorial praising Comey for doing such a good job of burying the Clinton investigation. She’s since tried to hide her feelings, deleting the aformentioned tweet after the FBI director changed his mind.

Brazile’s own e-mails came under scrutiny when she allegedly gave Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta a debate question in advance. According to e-mails published by WikiLeaks, she has apparently forwarded the Clinton team questions in advance more than once.

4. Rep. Nancy Pelosi

The House minority leader called Comey a “great man” and more or less said the FBI was lucky to have him. Over the weekend, however, she intimated that he was a weak and spineless coward who let Republicans bully him into changing his mind.

“The public interest would be served by the FBI providing the facts, rather than allowing Republicans to stoke innuendo and falsehoods 11 days away from a presidential election,” she said.

5. Sen. Harry Reid

On July 6, the Senate minority leader said no one can question Comey’s “integrity” and “competence.” He’s since been on the warpath against his former BFF for going after Hillary again, even going so far as to suggest Comey has put America in danger. In an open letter, Reid accused Comey of violating the Hatch Act for not taking Democrats seriously and investigating Donald Trump’s connections to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

6. Rep. Elijah Cummings

Back in July, the Democratic congressman reportedly told Comey he was the “epitome” of a public servant. Here’s the full barf-worthy quote.

I don’t know whether your family’s watching this, but I hope that they are as proud of you as I am, because you are the epitome of what a public servant is all about. . . Sacrificing over and over and over again, trying to do the right thing, sometimes coming under ridicule, but again still doing the right thing.

Now the bromance is totally over. On Monday, Cummings accused Comey of being a puppet for Republicans.

“It doesn’t surprise me, in a way, that he did this, because I don’t think the American people have a clue as to how hard the Republicans, particularly on my committee, have been on the FBI,” he said.

7. Vice Presidential Candidate Tim Kaine

8. Joe Conason

When Trump and his supporters attacked the FBI director for closing the investigation into Hillary, The National Memo editor lauded Comey as a longtime public servant.

He’s since changed his tune.

9. Area Millennial Reporter

This Elite Daily writer thought it was “worth noting” that Comey, a nasty Republican, was good enough to clear queen Hillary of any wrongdoing a few months ago.

But now that Comey is looking into Hillary again, HE’S BEING OVERDRAMATIC, YOU GUYS.

10.David Axelrod

Obama’s former senior advisor once told CNN that Comey was “widely respected as a guy of integrity.” Axelrod even took to Twitter to say Comey wasn’t at all working in cahoots with Democrats.

On Friday, however, Axelrod accused Comey of being “irresponsible.”

11. Rep. Ted Lieu

While Comey testified in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in July, the California Democrat asked Comey a series of effusive questions aimed at mocking House Republicans for questioning the FBI director’s decision to not go after Hillary.

“I would trust the FBI director,” Leiu said in July.

12. MSNBC’s Joy-Ann Reid

The MSNBC host wrote a scathing piece about Comey published in The Daily Beast on Saturday, alleging that Comey is letting House Republicans use the FBI as a political tool to punish Hillary.

Just a few months ago, she thought Comey’s investigation into Hillary’s e-mails, which led to zero consequences for the Democratic nominee, was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

In July, she thought he was “no hack.”

Democrats’ slobbering love affair with the FBI director was just so embarrassing. I’m glad it’s over.